Researcher Warns Space Weather Hole Blocks Manned Mars Mission

Research published in the journal Space Weather warns that
massive gaps in our understanding and monitoring of space weather
will effectively block US plans for a manned mars space mission.
The study, led by University of Warwick researcher Dr Claire
Foullon, draws on work that Dr Foullon and colleagues carried out
for the European Space Agency on radiation hazards and space
weather.

Dr Foullon points to particular concerns about the radiation
dangers of Solar Proton Events (SPEs) particularly those that
follow Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs - massive clouds of material
ejected from the Sun that produce dangerous, high energy, charged
particles). One of the largest such events ever recorded arrived at
Earth in August 1972 right between NASA's Apollo 16 and 17 manned
missions. Simulations of the radiation levels an astronaut inside a
spacecraft would have experienced during this event found that the
astronaut would have absorbed lethal doses of radiation within just
10 hours. It was simply good luck that this happened between the
missions.

Since then a number of satellite missions have been able to give
advanced warnings of SPE & CME events and revealed much about
their workings but that monitoring and understanding today still
only relates to a tiny part of our Solar System - literally just
the line between Earth and the Sun. A manned Mars mission will
travel far beyond the boundaries of our current understanding and
observation. While we have an increasing understanding the impact
of SPEs in and around the Earth we have no idea if the same holds
true for the geometry of space around the rest of the changing area
between Earth, Mars and the Sun. Nor do we know if the current
models of what happens in these events between the Sun and Earth
can be accurately extrapolated to understand what happens over the
greater distances between the Sun and Mars. Dr Foullon believes
those knowledge gaps are currently simply too large and too
dangerous to allow a manned Mars mission.

However the research outlines opportunities to learn from upcoming
space weather related satellite launches and makes 3
recommendations that could plug the holes in our understanding
sufficiently to allow a manned Mars mission to proceed in relative
safety. There are a number of upcoming space weather related
satellite launches that could be key to that but the 2005 Stereo
mission and the 2008-9 Solar Sentinels programme are of particular
value. The recommendations are:

Firstly Mars planners should pay particular attention to the
Stereo, and the part of the Solar Sentinels programme which will
place a satellite facing the opposite side of the Sun to Earth.
They should aim to replicate those missions just before a manned
mars mission launch with a package of 3 satellites integrated into
a single mission designed specifically to provide space weather
warnings for a Mars mission. Two of the satellites in that Mars
package to be positioned this side of the Sun like Stereo and one
on the other side of the sun like one of the planned solar
sentinels. Another option outlined in Dr Foullon's paper is that
one could instead plan a package of satellites with one in a Stereo
style position with two satellites in the L1 and L2 Sun-Mars
Lagrange points.

Secondly there must be considerable research to develop a
lightweight mechanism to be installed on the manned mission to give
some early warning of dangerous space weather. While we have some
clues as to how that might be done the technology is not yet there
to deliver a workable solution.

Lastly particular attention should be paid to the data from the
various upcoming space weather missions to develop a more robust
model of how dangerous space weather propagates over larger
distances than the "simple" path that we most understand
between the Sun and Earth.